{"title":"Safety score liability","authors":"Omri Ben-Shahar","doi":"10.1093/jla/laaf010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/laaf010","url":null,"abstract":"Data technology is increasingly deployed to assign safety scores to people and products. Could these scores be used to apportion liability for accidents? Instead of liability based on ad-hoc care level (the negligence rule), “safety score liability” imposes liability commensurate with the habitual propensity to behave unsafely. This article describes how such a regime works, the incentives it creates, and the barriers it faces. It demonstrates its application to the most common torts—auto accidents. Safety score liability offers a novel foundation for the notion of fault in tort law, with surprisingly strong incentives for care, and an effective scheme for compensating victims.","PeriodicalId":45189,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Legal Analysis","volume":"105 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145241857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Getting to yes: the role of coercion in debt renegotiations","authors":"Vincent S J Buccola, Marcel Kahan","doi":"10.1093/jla/laaf009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/laaf009","url":null,"abstract":"This article develops a comprehensive account of the methods of consent solicitation broadly construed. We offer four principal contributions. First, we identify the features of a solicitation that can produce coercive intercreditor dynamics. Second, we document the possibility of coercive methods under standard bond and loan contracts. Third, we show that economic considerations can justify coercion. Fourth, we conclude that the most coercive prevailing techniques cannot be so easily justified and propose an approach to construing debt contracts that would restrain what are likely the most value-destructive solicitation methods without condemning longstanding and plausibly value-enhancing techniques.","PeriodicalId":45189,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Legal Analysis","volume":"194 1","pages":"166-189"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145134624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What is the harm in (partisan) gerrymandering? Collective vs. dyadic accounts of representational disparities","authors":"Sanford C Gordon, Douglas M Spencer, Sidak Yntiso","doi":"10.1093/jla/laaf006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/laaf006","url":null,"abstract":"Traditional approaches for documenting the harm of gerrymandering emphasize collective representation by legislatures, minimizing the relationship between individual voters and their respective representatives. Federal courts have struggled to map collective accounts onto cognizable constitutional harms, reflecting a discomfort evaluating a system of representation inescapably rooted in geographic districts using diagnostics that treat districts and their boundaries as an inconvenience rather than an intrinsic feature. A normative account of representation and accountability rooted in the dyadic relationship between voters and their legislators addresses the exact harms that courts have articulated yet struggled to substantiate. We derive a formal model of dyadic representation that yields a measure of disparities among different voters, including those divided by partisanship. We then compare enacted plans in four states against two million simulated counterfactuals, demonstrating how conclusions about the harms from gerrymandering may be highly sensitive to political factors such as polarization and officeholder motivation.","PeriodicalId":45189,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Legal Analysis","volume":"67 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145089712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Pervasive Influence of Political Composition on Circuit Court Decisions","authors":"Alma Cohen","doi":"10.1093/jla/laaf004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/laaf004","url":null,"abstract":"Using a novel dataset of about 640,000 circuit court decisions from 1985 to 2020, I show that panel political composition is associated with case outcomes in a vastly broader array of federal circuit court cases—representing together about 90% of all cases—than prior work has appreciated. In cases between parties that could be perceived to have unequal power, Democratic-nominated judges tend to have a “Pro-Weak” tendency to side with the seemingly weaker party. In cases without perceived power inequality, Democratic-nominated judges tend to have a “Less-Deference” tendency to be more willing to reverse lower court decision.","PeriodicalId":45189,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Legal Analysis","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144694116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Strategic Incentives for Adopting the Global Minimum Tax","authors":"Wei Cui","doi":"10.1093/jla/laae008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/laae008","url":null,"abstract":"The USA, alongside many other nations, presently faces a vital policy choice: should it adopt the global minimum tax proposed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, purportedly to ensure basic levels of corporate taxation of large multinationals? I set out a framework for analyzing and predicting global minimum tax adoption by self-interested, national-income-maximizing governments. Contrary to both popular and prior scholarly claims, the global minimum tax is incentive incompatible: countries from which multinationals originate will likely suffer deep losses; the tax’s purported enforcement tool, even read in an aggressive, controversial fashion, is ineffective. The global minimum tax may unravel despite initial adoption. (JEL codes: F23, F55, H25, H73, H87, K34).","PeriodicalId":45189,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Legal Analysis","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142815770","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Limits of Formalism in the Separation of Powers","authors":"Shalev Gad Roisman","doi":"10.1093/jla/laae007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/laae007","url":null,"abstract":"Formalism is the dominant mode of separation of powers analysis on the Supreme Court and one of two paradigmatic approaches in the academy. It seeks to resolve disputes between Congress and the President by asking which branch has exclusive power over the relevant matter. This method is thought to work because, if one branch has exclusive power over the matter, then, by definition, the other branch does not. Although this method is coherent and workable in some relatively straightforward cases, it is of no use in areas where both branches’ “exclusive” powers overlap—as formalists routinely concede is possible. This is a major problem because almost all the disputes that actually arise today involve areas of overlapping power. In such cases, both branches have relevant power to act and come into conflict. This Article argues that separation of powers formalism has never built—and can never build—a coherent method that tells us which branch to prioritize in such instances. These are the limits of formalism in the separation of powers. Formalism might help us understand some uncontroversial separation of powers questions, but it cannot resolve the disputes that actually matter today.","PeriodicalId":45189,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Legal Analysis","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142645835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Putting Freedom of Contract in its Place","authors":"Rebecca Stone","doi":"10.1093/jla/laae004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/laae004","url":null,"abstract":"I develop a novel, rights-based conception of contract—the “democratic conception”—that can deliver a justification for granting a sphere of freedom to contracting parties while setting principled limits on that grant. It justifies doctrines—including the penalty doctrine, the doctrine of substantial performance, a robust doctrine of changed circumstances, and a robust doctrine of unconscionability—that an influential group of contract theorists argue set unprincipled limits on the parties’ equal procedural freedom. My account shows how these doctrines can be rendered compatible with a robust principle of freedom of contract that is grounded in the parties’ rights.","PeriodicalId":45189,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Legal Analysis","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141857793","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Matthew Dahl, Varun Magesh, Mirac Suzgun, Daniel E Ho
{"title":"Large Legal Fictions: Profiling Legal Hallucinations in Large Language Models","authors":"Matthew Dahl, Varun Magesh, Mirac Suzgun, Daniel E Ho","doi":"10.1093/jla/laae003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/laae003","url":null,"abstract":"Do large language models (LLMs) know the law? LLMs are increasingly being used to augment legal practice, education, and research, yet their revolutionary potential is threatened by the presence of “hallucinations”—textual output that is not consistent with legal facts. We present the first systematic evidence of these hallucinations in public-facing LLMs, documenting trends across jurisdictions, courts, time periods, and cases. Using OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4 and other public models, we show that LLMs hallucinate at least 58% of the time, struggle to predict their own hallucinations, and often uncritically accept users’ incorrect legal assumptions. We conclude by cautioning against the rapid and unsupervised integration of popular LLMs into legal tasks, and we develop a typology of legal hallucinations to guide future research in this area.","PeriodicalId":45189,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Legal Analysis","volume":"87 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141461890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Election Rules Affect Who Wins","authors":"Justin Grimmer, Eitan Hersh","doi":"10.1093/jla/laae001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/laae001","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary election reforms that are purported to increase or decrease turnout tend to have negligible effects on election outcomes. We offer an analytical framework to explain why. Contrary to heated political rhetoric, election policies have small effects on outcomes because they tend to target small shares of the electorate, have a small effect on turnout, and/or affect voters who are relatively balanced in their partisanship. After developing this framework, we address how the findings bear on minority voting rights. We then show that countermobilization from political parties cannot explain the small effects of election laws. We explain that even when a state passes multiple policies at the same time, the reforms will still only have a marginal effect on turnout and an ambiguous effect on who wins. Finally, we explain what policies should raise alarm about affecting outcomes.","PeriodicalId":45189,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Legal Analysis","volume":"78 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140534117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Crime Shapes Insurance and Insurance Shapes Crime","authors":"Tom Baker, Anja Shortland","doi":"10.1093/jla/laad002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/laad002","url":null,"abstract":"Crime creates demand for insurance but supplying insurance may promote crime. We examine five case studies of insured crimes (auto theft, art theft, kidnap and hijack for ransom, ransomware, and payment card fraud) and find a co-evolutionary process through which insurers engage with insureds, governments, and legal and extralegal third parties to mitigate losses, particularly when criminal innovations destabilize the insurance market. “Insurance as crime governance” stimulates demand for security, shapes criminal incentives, engages with the state to combat crime, and tolerates some crime in the interest of profitability.","PeriodicalId":45189,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Legal Analysis","volume":"114 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71507371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}